More than an Italian restaurant, Caméline has become one of the National Capital Region's most complete neighbourhood restaurants.
Caméline
51 Rue Saint-Jacques, Gatineau
Tuesday to Saturday: 5 PM – 10 PM
Closed Sunday & Monday
For a long time, the rule of thumb in the National Capital Region was simple: if you wanted to eat well, Ottawa is where it’s at. Gatineau had some decent restaurants here and there, sure, but the ambition, the wine lists worth reading, the bar programs worth taking seriously, those mostly lived in Ottawa. The balance has been tipping for a few years now, restaurant by restaurant, and Caméline is one of the more convincing arguments that the tipping is real.
It opened in 2023 at 51 rue Saint-Jacques, in the small red-brick space in Vieux-Hull that most locals will recognize from its previous life as Rustiek (and, before that, a couple of other things). The team is chef Simon Laroche, Alexandre Régimbal on the floor and the beverage side, and Audrey Labelle on the design. Less than a year in, they landed on Air Canada’s enRoute long list for Canada’s Best New Restaurants, which tends to be a pretty good filter for places doing something worth paying attention to.
The room is part of why it sticks. White walls framed by moss-green millwork, terracotta flooring, natural wood and glossy tiled tabletops create a room that feels warm. Hanging greenery softens the architectural lines, while the modest-sized dining room encourages conversation. Afternoon light pours through the front windows. By dinner, the pendants and the candles take over, and the whole place turns soft and warm.
What you don’t see is the usual Italian-restaurant furniture. No wine barrels pushed against a wall. No Vespa prints. No distressed-wood sign pointing nowhere in particular. The materials look honest, which is the same word I’d use for the kitchen.
What separates Caméline is that the cocktails, the wine, the food, the room… they’re all speaking the same language. Most places that get one or two of those thing right and ignore the rest.
The cocktail list is short on purpose: five signatures, plus a few non-alcoholic options, most of them in the $15 to $17 range, which is roughly two to three bucks less per item than you’d pay in Ottawa for something comparable. There’s Aperol, Campari, a few herbal liqueurs, but it doesn’t read as a Negroni-and-spritz menu by another name.
I sampled four of the five signature cocktails, each arriving in well-chosen glassware and elegantly garnished.
Dahlia (17$): Similar to a “Naked & Famous” cocktail, it’s bright, bitter, slightly sweet, with mezcal’s smokiness woven through. My personal favourite during my first visit. On a later visit, the recipe had changed: tequila in place of mezcal. Still good. Just not as good.
Capucine 15$: This salted rim cocktail is ideal for spicy margarita lovers. It’s spicy, with botanical notes and a delicate, refreshing cucumber taste.
Fleur de lune 15$: This is an elevated Gin and Tonic. It has strong notes of basil and bitterness from the quinine (tonic). The libation is beautifully presented in a heavy highball glass and garnished with 3 sliced green grapes.
Jacinthe (17$): This delicious cocktail is fruity, with notes of grapes and honey. This contrasts with the freshly-milled black pepper floating on the surface. The flavour from the cucumber and dill ingredients listed is very subtle.
But the wine list is where Caméline really separates itself from most. Régimbal has built a list around small producers and low-intervention bottles. France and Quebec get the most space, which makes sense, but the list wanders well beyond them: Italy, Greece, Croatia, Georgia, Chile, Portugal, Australia. Sparkling, skin-contact, rosé, red, white, all of it represented, and a meaningful chunk of it available by the glass, which matters more than people realize because it lets you build a meal around the wine.
Quebec producers show up over and over: Domaine Bergeville, Pinard & Filles, Domaine La Bauge, Les Pervenches. Which is, I think, the real tell about what Caméline is. Despite the Italian bones of the cooking, the wine list keeps coming back to Quebec. This is a contemporary Quebec neo-bistro with an Italian soul, not an Italian restaurant that happens to be in Quebec. That’s the whole philosophy in a sentence.
The beer list is short and leans hard on Quebec craft. Nothing to complain about.
Laroche’s menu changes with the season, but the underlying approach is consistent: Italian technique paired with Quebec ingredients. He’s not reproducing recipes from Bologna. He’s translating them.
On my visits, the menu included one of the better raw bar offerings I’ve come across in Gatineau, a beef tartare and a scallop crudo that both felt confident in a category that’s quite hard to come by this side of the river.
Agnolotti au Short Ribs de Boeuf (34$): This dish was properly seasoned, savoury, cheesy, and deeply comforting. Simply delicious.
Gnocchi (32$): Light, tender, sauced with nice chunks of cooked tomato and covered in freshly-grated parmesan. Simple, satisfying, and delectable.
So what is Caméline? An Italian restaurant with a serious cocktail program? Sure. A neighbourhood spot with a wine list most Ottawa restaurants would envy? Also true. Neither label quite fits, and I think that’s the point. What Laroche, Régimbal and Labelle have built is a restaurant where the architecture, the kitchen, the bar and the front-of-house are all arguing for the same thing.
Vieux-Hull is having a moment, and a lot of that has to do with the kind of operators willing to put in the work. Caméline is one of the anchors of that shift.